The Foundation
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." --Thomas JeffersonOpinion in Brief
Dr. Donald Berwick, the new Medicare czar
"Barack Obama's incredible 'recess appointment' of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is probably the most significant domestic-policy personnel decision in a generation. It is more important to the direction of the country than Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. The court's decisions are subject to the tempering influence of nine competing minds. Dr. Berwick would direct an agency that has a budget bigger than the Pentagon. Decisions by the CMS shape American medicine. Dr. Berwick's ideas on the design and purpose of the U.S. system of medicine aren't merely about 'change.' They would be revolutionary. One may agree with these views or not, but for the president to tell the American people they have to simply accept this through anything so flaccid as a recess appointment is beyond outrageous. It isn't acceptable. ... Let's look, then, at what President Obama won't let the American electorate hear Dr. Berwick say in front of a committee of Congress. These excerpts are from past speeches and articles by Dr. Berwick: 'I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do. ... Please don't put your faith in market forces. It's a popular idea: that Adam Smith's invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. ... ' That the Obama White House would try to push this past public scrutiny with a recess appointment says more about Barack Obama than it does Dr. Berwick. Vilifying Dr. Berwick alone for his views is in a way beside the point. Within Mr. Obama's circle they all think like this. Defeat Dr. Berwick, and they will send up 50 more who would pursue the same goals. If the American people want the world Dr. Berwick wishes to give them, that's their choice. But they must be given that choice with full, televised confirmation hearings. Barack Obama, Donald Berwick and the rest may fancy themselves philosopher kings who know what we need without the need to inform or persuade us first. That's not how it works here." --columnist Daniel Henninger
Liberty
"The co-chairs of President Obama's Debt and Deficit Commission painted a gloomy picture of the economy last weekend when they appeared at the closing session of the National Governors Association meeting in Boston. Former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, called the current budgetary trends a cancer 'that will destroy the country from within' unless checked by tough action in Washington. So the place that gave us the problem is now going to provide the solution? I have as much faith in Washington curing its overspending as I do a bartender helping an alcoholic swear off drinking. Cancer is the wrong diagnosis. With the exception of those who are heavy smokers, most cancer patients get the disease through no fault of their own. The proper diagnosis of what ails Washington and too many Americans is addiction. Congress is addicted to spending and they have 'hooked' too many Americans on their bad habit. ... This should not be a partisan issue, but if Democrats make it one, then a new Republican majority should do what it failed to do the last time it controlled Congress: break our big government addiction and restore the liberty that we've lost." --columnist Cal ThomasGovernment
"[O]ne-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, with the effect of propping up the pay and saving the jobs of public employee union members. As a result, while 8 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public-sector jobs has barely budged. The cynical will see these measures as a political payoff and might venture that the unions have gotten something like a hundredfold payout for the $400 million they gave to Obama and his copartisans. Those who insist on looking for purer motives, in contrast, might see something potentially more sinister. They might see a former community organizer acting out of a sincere conviction that America would be better off with a much, much larger unionized private sector. That prompts the question of what the private sector would look like if nearly half its workers were union members, as is the case now with the public sector. As one who grew up in Detroit in the heyday of the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers, I have some idea what the answer would be. ... It took the U.S. manufacturers multiple decades to achieve quality levels comparable to those their foreign-based competitors achieved with American workers. ... [T]he Obama Democrats want to take us back to a system that produced huge inefficiencies and rigidity in the private sector. Does that sound progressive?" --political analyst Michael BaroneThe Gipper
"An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture." --Ronald ReaganStay informed and inform others of the truth! And that's the All Right Idea!!